As some of you might know, one of my all time favorite movies is the Wong Kar-Wai film,“In the Mood For Love.” The story stripped is basically about two characters in 1960s Hong Kong that end up falling in love with each other despite their conviction to not end up like their adulterous spouses. Amid the incredible artistry and highly stylized sensuality of the colors and textures of Kar-Wai’s sets, the two characters move past each others’ lonely lives, painfully committed to their sense of morality. In one of the scenes the man tells his work colleagues during dinner of how: “Before in the old days when people had secrets they didn’t want to share…They’d climb a mountain and find a tree… Carve a hole in the tree and whisper the secret into the tree… and cover the hole with mud…that way no one would ever discover the secret.”
This is important, as I’m sure I annoyingly mentioned repeatedly to Michael while clutching his forearm, wondering in anticipation if he would feel the weight of emotion I do every time I see the final scene of the film in which years have passed and we see the main character making his way alone down a corridor to a hole in the wall of the ruins of an old Cambodian temple. There he is seen by us and a solitary monk seated above, while he whispers with his sad eyes closed and then finally leaves, alone. As many times as I’ve seen this film, I am haunted by unseen emotions and feelings that have only been allowed to subsist in the wistful adagios that haunt each scene in this beautiful film.
I don’t know why this film has come to mind lately except that one of the lines in the film keeps coming back to me as I’ve gone up the proverbial mountain and have whispered and poured out my owns prayers to God. I’ve laid them before him.
“That era has passed…Nothing that belongs to it exists anymore.” (In the Mood For Love)
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